


Flowers for Eros

by Billywick, selwyn



Series: Transformers various Roleplay Fiction [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:58:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8386330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Billywick/pseuds/Billywick, https://archiveofourown.org/users/selwyn/pseuds/selwyn
Summary: Just one look was enough; he knew there were only two options when it came to Delphi and its CMO.And Tarn does hate to waste beauty.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *fingerguns* read the warnings kiddies.
> 
> This is Selwyn, resident smasher of booty. Comment more u nasty robotfuckers

It was once theorized that a Cybertronian could live forever. Now, of course, strenuous study conducted by somewhat dubious organizations deemed that while, yes,  _ technically _ , they could, but things like sickness and ill repair and the emotional problems that tend to build up over several million years of life did one in before they could die from natural… death.

Yet, for all their longevity, life hit the typical Cybertronian as fast as it could hit the average human –  across all time and space, that was the one thing that remained unchanged. Life hits you, and it tries to escape, to be expressed in any way possible. In a way, it’s a lot like lightning.

It was stepping off onto Messatine where one of those grand, epic moments of great enlightenment hit Tarn. He and his division had stepped to hunker down in their usual base, to survey the nuke haul from the mining drones, and rest for a few days before setting off on another determined hunt. It was then that Kaon had the grace to point out the establishment of a new Autobot base a smidge too close to their borders that Tarn raised himself from his idleness to examine the newest intruder on his realm.

“Autobots,” Kaon said, his tone conveying the full extent of his contempt for the faction, “It’s a new clinic. Called Delphi - haven’t managed to hack their comms yet. Only got word… an hour ago. Should we flush them out?”

Tarn held up a servo to halt the words. He examined the datapad in front of him instead. A quick few snaps of the surveillance drones showed a cube-like building squatting in the snow. It was reinforced against the damaging temperatures, with thick walls and few windows, and big red crosses to declare their purpose.

“Staff?”

“Chief Medical Officer Pharma. A couple nurses and minor doctors under him. I think they mostly treat the ‘bot miners.”

“Assets?”

“Nothing. No nuke mines near  _ there _ .”

Tarn and Kaon’s gaze met. Now, they weren’t really kitted out to  _ fight _ Autobots, but no one was going to protest if they went and kicked over this clinic anyway. Usually, it was at Tarn’s discretion –  sometimes they did, sometimes they had more pressing matters.

Right now, they were all free, so…

“Bring up their staff. Pictures.”

“Hm… here. This isn’t a very good one though. Managed to snap it when he got up there to fix something on the roofs.”

It was a slightly blurry picture, a little out of focus, but clear enough. Tarn’s optics zoomed in on the subject of the picture. He stared.

He stared a little more.

After another few moments of silent staring, Tarn reset his vocalizer with a low click.

“I think I’ll handle this one myself.”

“But,  _ Tarn _ –”

Tarn only had to glance at him, before Kaon grudgingly gave in. Tarn sometimes took all the slaughter –  and T-cogs –  for himself, and while it wasn’t too out of place, it was still a little begrudging on the division’s end.  _ They _ wanted to kill  _ too _ . But this was  _ Tarn _ , so your best option really was to shut up and nod along.

“Chief Medical Officer Pharma, yes?”

“Yeah - think he’s a flier. Got wings, see?”

“Yes,” Tarn nodded, clutching the picture tightly. His gaze was a little far away, unfocused. “I see.”

 

Delphi, Pharma, High Command. Every single instance, every link in this unfortunate chain, was entirely unaware of who or what had set pede on Messatine. The facility and its staff were entirely impervious to the imminent threat, shrouded in ignorance, though it was far from a blissful existence.

Supplies were scarce. The miners were injured nearly every day, faulty, old equipment and lack of proper protocols contributing to a high turnover of patients at the small clinic. Still, Pharma never lost sight or control of his workload or that of his staff’s, often times working himself into running on fumes to keep this vestige of Autobot care functioning.

It was unpleasantly cold. He’d even had to do repairs on the building manually, by himself, since none of his staff was equipped to fly. Waiting on High Command to resupply them? That was slowly becoming a sour joke around here. A joke that wore down the polish on Pharma’s frame and the paperthin layer of patience on his mind.

They talked about him behind his back. It was obvious. Hushed whispers dropped into awkward silence where he appeared. Glances slid over his turbine when he left a room. He knew he asked a lot, controlled a lot, berated his staff and corrected them with no mercy. 

A control freak, is what they called him when they thought he couldn’t hear. A more brilliant doctor there was none, at least on that they were correct, even if that expression came with a grain of salt. A lot of salt. Pharma always knew when people didn’t like him, and it was never not the case when it came to his subordinates.

They loved his skills, and yet felt belittled by his appropriately dosed arrogance. Jealous, petty little sparks. They could gossip and idle all they wanted; as long as they got the jobs he delegated into their servos done.

 

The DJD, despite appearances, was a body that was constantly and nigh-obsessively ordered by Tarn. He enjoyed the petty bureaucracy of it all and even their slaughters –  wild and frenzied as they were –  had a particular sense of  _ order _ to it all. A little script, with deviations allowing for moods and inspirations as they struck.

There was the script for executions. There was the script for Autobot bases. There was even a script for investigations. The only reason why they were never properly divined was because the logic behind these scripts were often maddening in their sociopathic prioritization.

You could eat someone’s brain module, but heaven forbid you be late on your paperwork. It was one of Tarn’s many eccentricities that the DJD adopted and adapted to. So his insistence on being the one to handle the base didn’t raise too many brows (Tesarus even looked vaguely relieved –  ice and his grinder didn’t go comfortably).

It started off slowly. The first few snapshots, all conducted by drones, from a distance. Tarn carefully arranged the pictures to give him a 3D idea of the terrain around the clinic, and the clinic’s basic structure. A few lucky shots from windows let him make a rudimentary map of its insides. It was slow going, done over weeks, but he was nothing if not consistent. The DJD contented themselves to watch him slowly prowl, test the waters, and relax while their commander was concentrated on something else. 

As the time crawled by, Tarn began to venture closer to the clinic. He never went close enough to be seen, but he hung by the dark crags that surrounded the clinic to watch, intent and predatory. Time crawled on more, and that was when he began to leave the first signs.

Footsteps, where there shouldn’t be any. Melted and refrozen ice, from a fusion cannon that no one else had. Dark flashes from the corners of people’s optics, the slightest tremble of one’s spark. Comms became spotty, squawking static more often than not even on clear days. Nothing overt, never overt.

Tarn was patient. He last a full month of this, simply  _ watching _ , before he began to leave the pictures.

Scattered, random, picked with seemingly no pattern in mind. He left them where no one would see him go –  usually out in the snow, only visible through the windows and from the roof, in front of the mines –  everywhere he staked out. They were the same pictures that the drone took –  snapshots of various medical personnel, the walls of the clinic, taken at different times and places, eerie in their detail.

 

It was as if the whole facility was being haunted by a very observant, disturbing ghost. Of course, being a forged medic, Pharma did not believe in such nonsense and superstition, but even he felt queasy when he discovered a scattered handful of surveillance photos, strewn in plain sight when he went to take his morning flight.

He’d gathered them up after landing in the melting snow beside them, stuffed the pictures into his subspace. His staff was already extremely on edge, from just a few circulating rumors of an ominous, tall and dark entity, appearing just out of eyesight, striking the cold fear of imminent death into the sparks of those that spun said tales.

It was ridiculous, hearsay and it was a real dampener on the productivity of his staff. Some nurses even refused their shifts during the nights, simply because the guards were reduced in number and the sightings reportedly frequent.

There was no such thing as ghosts. There couldn’t be. Once you lost one of the two thirds in Rossums’ Trinity that life depended on, there was nothing remaining in this realm of existence. Pharma didn’t believe in any other, so to him, the hushed prayers were nothing but personal weakness, expressed in the dire need of praying to deities to do what the mecha themselves could not.

But let them pray to Primus, if it kept them working.

Pharma could only hope that if he encountered said ‘ghost’, he’d be able to clarify this mystical haunting once and for all.

More than once, he’d glanced over the husk of  _ Oracle _ , the medical facility that had been destroyed a long time ago. Were its dead the reason his clinic would fall to Messatine’s icy winds too?

Pharma had his doubts.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Tarn’s peculiar stalking methods were carefully cultivated. After the pictures stopped, he let them have a week of respite. Then, he began to burn things. First to suffer was only the snow –  leaving treacherous pits of half-melted slush that turned the previously smooth landscape into a field of unseen sinkholes and ice patches. It went on –  burns on the walls, on the doors, even the rocks –  before the first miner was killed.

He was dragged out unceremoniously to the front of the clinic, with a stake driven through his chest, piercing his spark chamber. It was a morbid offering –  his limbs spreadeagle, optics shattered, his helm and middle all peeled back to rip out the brain module and T-cog. It was the most blatant message, but the one that could not be ignored.

 

Ghosts no longer factored into the equations. The chilling realization of what was going on was far, far worse than a drop in productivity among his staff. Pharma would have much preferred the haunting to be real and for his entire concept of reality to be warped than this.

A warning. A sign. A corpse, desecrated, stripped of its Trinity. And there were only few mecha who would send messages this disgusting. 

They were in Decepticon territory. That much was certain now. Pharma could only wait until something worse happened. He barely rallied his staff to keep working the morning they found the miner.

 

The miner was only the first gift. Soon, they grew more and more explicit. Gruesome. Tarn’s creativity was only mitigated by his opportunities to work unseen, but soon enough, his magnum opus of his stalking reached it peak. It was a miner, taken from underground, and carefully hung across the window of Pharma’s office.

In several pieces, of course. His internal tubing connected him, while everything else hung like gory streamers, dripping their fluids down the clean walls of the clinic. The energon froze in streaks, ridden with ice crystals that glittered sharply. His helm had been split in half entirely, brain module shattered, and even the fingers had been delicately separated by each knuckle. The stains ran high up the walls, with coolant and oil sprayed every which way, and only one part was left undamaged.

His spark chamber had been torn open, gaping obscenely, but the spark inside sputtered weakly, trying to survive. It had been turned to face the window and with each weak flutter of the spark, the whole frame shuddered, as if trying to move from where it’d been nailed into the walls.

The final message was, in contrast to the horror show above it, an etching into the metal of the wall. Thin and fine, it took a good look to see properly.

_ Sunset. _

 

The scream that came from Pharma’s mouth the second he walked into his office was ungodly, and it brought his staff running towards the surgeon. In wise foresight, however, Pharma slammed his door shut in their faceplates. If they saw this, they’d refuse to work for the rest of the week. After barring the codes to let no one in, Pharma turned back to the gruesome scene before his window, not even noticing the writing on the inside of his office. His protocols urged him to take note of the weak spark and try to preserve it, save it. Pharma probably could, and they’d finally get a witness to their terrifying ghostly stalker.

But the sheer disgusting mess, frozen and clumped and clinging to inner tubing and cabling before Pharma’s usually clear viewfront window was vent-shutteringly gruesome. Whoever had done this...they...he, Pharma was dealing with a sick, sick mind here.

The shock took a good long moment to even remotely subside. The only reason Pharma moved on from the disturbing scene was the urgency of his protocols to get the dying spark into his care. Without thought, he had the windows open, scraping frozen energon and parts as they creaked apart and Pharma reached out to reel in the poor mech’s vital organs. Barely clinging to life...Pharma couldn’t wait.

It was only once the miner was carted off on a gurney and Pharma’s hands stained with cold energon that he looked up at his wall and the writing that had been etched there. On the _ inside _ . That psychopath had been inside of Pharma’s office.

 

And so the sun creeped down the sky, inch by inch. Tarn hoped Pharma had noticed his little message –  it’d taken a  _ dear _ amount of effort to scratch that little bit in, and make sure the miner stayed on. And if he didn’t, the deviation from his whole  _ plan _ would be really quite irritating.

Messatine’s two suns began to sink below the horizon, and it was time for Tarn to make his move.

A quiet ping to Kaon, and he quickly accessed Delphi’s general radio. It took no effort for Tarn to patch in, and begin to hum along with the background drone. The white noise blended into each other, each note layered upon another, coaxing the sparks to slow, to sleep, to pulse flatly until their owners were too exhausted to move. It took almost an hour to get  _ everyone _ to fall down at their stations, nearly dead to the world as their sparks slowed, that Tarn broke in.

Well, broke  _ in _ waas generous. Kaon kept the doors unlocked for him, so it was a simple matter of opening the doors and shaking the snow off his pedes before walking inside.

He ignored the medics scattered around the clinic. His ultimate quarry was senseless within his office, sprawled over whatever surface he’d collapsed on. Tarn opened his door with the same ease as the others, and slipped inside without issue.

He circled the office, looking all over it. He touched the plaques on the walls, ran his servo along the surface of the desk, drew his claws over the datapads stacked upon each other. It was all terribly  _ neat _ , and he purred, approving.

Finally, he settled down on the chair behind the desk. It wasn’t quite enough to support his weight, so it groaned, but it held up admirably. From his subspace, he drew out a decanter and shot glass, and poured himself exactly three fingers before sipping the high grade.

It’d been two months, two weeks, and three days since the DJD initially landed on Messatine. The same time since he’d first seen Pharma in a lone blurry photo. Now, this would be their first conversation.

Tarn settled his cannon-bearing arm on the desk, so he wouldn’t have to move too much if he had to shoot. With a soft  _ snick _ , he cut off the transmission playing his deadly song to Pharma. While everyone else slept their way closer to their deaths, Pharma was gently urged into waking with a soft, short,  _ “Wake _ .”

 


	3. Chapter 3

He couldn’t remember going to sleep. He must have, because his frame and systems read no damage, just some mild recalibration on his chronometer. Some time had passed. Oh, and he’d spilled the energon he had intended to fuel on.

Odd. Why was he on the floor? Why would he just-

His field, casually sprawling through his office, brushed an unfamiliar, unidentified one at roughly the same time his optics onlined. Pharma’s spark jolted in its casing, he clung to the wall behind him as he both tried to get up and tried to put distance between himself and the hulking mech in his chair.

 

“Who are you? How did you get in here? _ Security _ !”

His vocalizer only hitched slightly at the sight of the fusion cannon and upon identifying the mask that served as a faceplate. Decepticon. A massive, lurking Decepticon. Their stalker? Definitely.

Why was he here? Would he kill Pharma? Had he something to do with his...state? Where was his damn security detail?

_ Please don't be here to kill me. Please go away you nightmare creature. I would have preferred a damn ghost. _

 

Tarn received Pharma's panic without even batting an optic. When he called for security, Tarn idly refilled his cube and took another sip before setting it down with a resolute  _ tak _ .

“I doubt calling for security would be of much use to you if I am already revealing myself at this stage,” Tarn said. He brought out another cube –  one far more finely decorated than the one Pharma was using –  and set it down on Pharma’s side of the desk. He poured in a generous four fingers of high grade before settling back, lacing his digits together to watch the medic in front of him, assessing.

“Did you like my gifts? I picked them out with you in mind.”

 

It didn’t take long for Pharma to understand that his security would not come. Even before the hulking Decepticon bothered to inform him of...his state. His existence and being here was all a screaming warning bell for Pharma to leave.

Only, he knew he couldn’t. This was not a trap, this was just a demonstration of power. This Decepticon had the power to walk into his clinic, a guarded autobot facility, and the world fell to his pedes around him. Or had he slaughtered everyone on his way in? Had Pharma blacked out in shock and missed it? Or had he been assaulted first?

Thousands of useless questions spiralled through his mind, but none of them made it out of his vocalizer. Instead, he glared. He didn’t dare voice anything sharply, simply because...this was their stalker, their ghost, their murderous messenger.

“Gifts?”

When among the chaos and disgusting, dismembered corpses had there been deliveries? Had he missed something?

Pharma was still close to the wall and the dispenser, not daring to let his optics stray from the nameless threat in his chair. And that’s when he realized that those horrible scenes, left for him to find...?

_ Those were the gifts. _

His tanks roiled and he just barely pressed back the urge to purge.

“With me in mind?”

Was he supposed to be in those positions? Impaled, dismembered, spreadeagled and draped like poorly chosen decorations? What kind of sick mind was behind that mask?

 

“How remarkable. Do you only speak in questions?”

Tarn shifted in his seat a fraction, so that he leaned away from the medic still sprawled over the floor. Pharma still had yet to  _ wow _ him in any measure, but perhaps shock had taken the bite from him. So he crooked his digit, gesturing in the universal way of  _ come closer _ .

“Now… doctor. Pick yourself up. Try to be a little more presentable. I  _ did _ tell you I would come at sunset, did I not?”

 

Pharma didn’t answer him this time, although he was still full of questions. He straightened up from the ground, cleaning off dried energon from his frame. Avoiding the burning gaze was a good idea. He focused on the fusion cannon. Double fusion cannon. A chill ran over his turbine, which stuttered as Pharma tried to compose himself. Emphasis on trying.

“You did. You were here, in my office.”

Who was this mech, this nightmare apparition? Would he even answer if Pharma asked?

Clearly, this was somehow personal. And like Pits he would come closer to this monster.

 

Tarn’s temper was a barely leashed thing at the best of times and Pharma’s casual ignorance of his order dropped the room’s temperature at least three degrees. He rapped his claws on the desk, leaving scratches on the surface. “While I commend you on your ability to grasp the patently  _ obvious _ ,” he drawled, “I find it rather perplexing that you are standing  _ there _ , when I told you to come  _ here _ .”

His patience fluctuated, this close to his quarry. Any denials would likely compromise what few shreds were left at this point, so it would be best for Pharma’s overall health if he scurried to obey. If not… well, Tarn  _ had _ several ways this night could end.

For now, the slow tension of the room remained subtle. Tarn was content to see what direction Pharma would take this in.

 

“If you’re going to shoot me, I’d rather be here.” Pharma sniped, although he did contemplate coming closer. The cannons...they would tear through his frame. Primus, he wasn’t ready to die. He had so much left to do, to experience. Pharma wanted to waver, but he would not show naked fear to this decepticon. They got off on that sort of thing, or so he’d heard. Well, he would not give him the pleasure.

Pharma bravely dared to meet the crimson gaze again.

“You’ve yet to tell me who you are, or why you’re here. And since you haven’t shot me yet, I assume there is something you want, that only I can provide.”

 

“A big assumption to make.” Tarn rose from his seat. The fusion cannons returned to his side, their barrel still dark for now. He circled the desk, servos folding behind his back, pacing towards Pharma slowly. His optics were hooded, leaving little to go off.

“Why do you think I am here? Perhaps, since you are so skilled with assuming matters, you can give it a go.” The office was a spacious one, but a mech of Tarn’s size shrunk it down to mere trap that the doctor would have no way of escaping. Tarn’s bulk blocked the doorways and the body still hung at his window, blocking that as well.

“Before you speak anything else, let me provide a small warning.” Tarn loomed over Pharma, seemingly examining the plaque behind him. “You’ll have to move fast, because your staff and patients are all currently on the path to a slow death. In about… two hours, I suppose, their sparks will slow enough to fizzle out. No pressure.”

 

Pharma’s optics flared at that, in shock and anger. His entire staff was dying? What kind of insane weapon had the nightmare con used on them? Panic welled up in him, but Pharma swallowed it down expertly. Control. Keep calm. Do not waver.

“You...you need something. From a clinic, or else you would be having this conversation with the foreman. It can’t be energon, or you’d have taken the mining facility over instead of doing this.” Think. Think further. What could it be? A procedure? A part? 

“Something that requires a medic to do for you. You can’t be after resources, ours are hardly worth the effort.”

The gifts. The warnings. What did they mean? Pharma couldn’t really make sense of the butchery, other than that they involved a lot of missing trinity parts.

“You need me to do something for you. A procedure? Repairs?”

 

“Not quite.”

Tarn advanced on Pharma until they were close enough to touch. A servo descended on his shoulder, vice-tight and forceful. “What I’m looking for is nothing as concrete as  _ any _ of those examples.” With a push, he moved Pharma away from the wall and towards the desk.

“I’m looking for a reason, you could say. A reason to let you exist. A reason to keep this clinic standing. A reason for my…  _ indulgence _ in your continued state of exigence.”

 

Pharma wanted to scorch the con’s touch off of his plating. How dare he touch him? Who did he think he was? Wasn’t he reading the plaques? He had a renowned forged medic at his disposal and he was looking for a  _ reason _ to let him live? The mech was a fool.

Pharma said none of what he thought. Would he have to offer something absurd? What though? He had a few spare parts, a lot of liquids in containers and patients.

“There must be something I can offer to you. I’m resourceful.”

 

Tarn shook his helm. As expected, the mech wasn’t understanding what Tarn meant. He already  _ knew _ this was one of the greater medics of Cybertron but… well…  _ eh _ . Great medical service wasn’t what Tarn was looking for, right here and now.

Debating Pharma’s continued existence laid on the boundary line of  _ how detrimental is he to my work _ and  _ how much can he convince me _ . Right now, Tarn was only vaguely grateful Pharma wasn’t a complete idiot. Imagine if he’d wasted all that effort for that!

“Let us talk, doctor. Sit down, please. Try some high grade and let us talk like  _ civilized _ mecha.”

 

Pharma obeyed, if only to humor his invader. The mech seemed to think this was a perfectly legitimate negotiation, only that he held all the power and Pharma could die if he said the wrong thing. What kind of grounds for a discussion were those?

Sitting down at his desk, Pharma gingerly reached for the energon, but he looked up sharply when Tarn moved again. There was that noise again, and that scent. The mech didn’t smell...bad, per say, but there was a smoky, subtle hint about him that came with a very specific type of damage. A rarer kind, true, but Pharma was a very experienced medic. He took note of it and sipped the energon.

It was decadent and he couldn’t hide the surprised, heady rush that flared his field. He hadn’t had anything this good in a long, long time.

“It may not be your reason to let this clinic stand, but I recommend a t-cog transplant for you soon. I can hear it burning from here.”

 

“You are perceptive.” It was an observation, not a compliment. Another tick in Pharma’s own favor, even if Tarn was hesitant to add any more to that side of the figurative board. Tarn took up his own glass and regarded the medic on the other side of him.

“Enlighten me, perhaps. I’ve seen those awards - what is a medic like you doing on a planet like Messatine? Isn’t it a rather… lower posting?”  _ Resourceful  _ barely covered it. What kind of administration put a forged Iaconian medic out  _ here _ ?

 

Pharma didn’t flinch physically, but some part of his mind heftily agreed with the decepticon. He shouldn’t be out here, running a small clinic on the fringes of dangerous territory. He belonged in the protected midst of his faction. He was a valuable asset, and here he was being squandered.

At least he managed not to sound completely outraged when he answered.

“It was a difficult assignment. No one else could handle it. Energon mines are indispensable resources, and it requires experience and creativity to make do here. A senior medic was required.”

It was the best excuse he could come up with to convince himself. That didn’t wash away the bitter resentment he felt.

 

“And it’s right in DJD territory.”

He swirled the energon in his glass contemplatively, watching the colors interchange in the light. “To date, Messatine has always been a position of interest. It is a nucleon hotspot, with massive veins under the surface, and in the earliest stages of the war, Messatine even was a front lines planet. There are an estimated one hundred and seventeen Autobot bases here, all abandoned, and a proportionate number of Decepticon bases. All are dead zones now, and the last sizeable base,  _ Oracle _ , was destroyed years ago. And now… Delphi. Not a full base, even. You have minimal security, only a few mines are active anymore, and the war has moved on. Now, a different base resides, besides Delphi.  _ Overseer _ , a holdout of the DJD.”

Are you sure this outpost is an honor, or was it an attempt to keep you away?”

 

_ DJD _ . Decepticon Justice Division. There was not a mech alive today who did not know Megatron’s executioners. They struck terror into Decepticon and Autobot alike. Pharma had been informed that they’d moved on from Messatine, that it was no longer of interest to them.

How terribly misinformed he’d been. And now, the mystery of Oracle’s demise became crystal clear to him. The medic sipped more energon, hoping the burn of it would overwhelm the bitterness and fear lodging itself into his throat.

He’d been lied to. Posted into danger, made  _ expendable _ . Rage bubbled through Pharma, though he kept it contained.

“It is a necessity. It is war. There is no room for luxury, even for those who deserve it.”

 

“You’re sipping one of the finest grades Cybertron’s produced. Towers, predating the Golden Age, completely pure, drawn from under the mantle of our planet. Less than a thousand bottles exist. The very cube you hold could buy a ship, depending on where you look.”

Tarn set the bottle down between them with a click.

“There is plenty of room for luxury –  and the proper recognition –  if you aren’t blinded.”

 

Pharma didn’t feel inclined not to drink the decadence presented to him. The clock was ticking - he’d made a note of the two hour estimate as soon as the decepticon had mentioned it - and he would not waste precious time in discussing whether or not it was punishment that he was here, in this outpost, dealing with a constant shortage and old equipment.

“That depends on the angle you have on this war. In which, I assume, you are part of the Decepticon Justice Division. And given that you mentioned my colleagues’ sparks and you’re free to be here to broker for something, you must be...their commander. Tarn. But the question remains, what do you want from me,  _ Tarn _ ? There must be some civil way to resolve this...predicament.”

Pharma didn’t like the way that designation rolled smoothly off of his vocalizer. As smooth as the high-grade churning in his tanks.

 

“Call it curiosity, if you will. I wondered why someone of your calibre was stuck out here, where so few can enjoy the fruit of your skill.” More than curiosity, but Pharma didn’t need to know that. “I want to know how you might handle this. My arrival, the dying staff… if you’d panicked, I would have killed you right here and then.”

Tarn crossed his legs. “Consider this an offer, if only because I despise seeing such waste. You would have the recognition and luxuries you deserve, doctor, if you walked away from the Autobots. I will even spare your staff.”

 

“Walked away from the Autobots?” Was this a recruitment? Pharma knew better than to laugh, but he couldn’t conceal the surge of pride that had his vents flutter open and shut. The DJD’s commander wanted him for his skill. If that wasn’t a compliment, he didn’t know what could be.

But leaving the Autobots? He couldn’t fathom such a choice.

“As much as I appreciate the drink,” notably, he put his empty cube on the table, “you understand how intimidating a prospect treason is for me. You are offering me this on threat of death of those under my care. What could I expect from serving you, rather than my faction?”

 

“What the Autobots can’t offer you. Safety. Protection. Recognition. Do you really want to freeze your plates on Messatine, caring for miners who barely understand that you’re capable of doing  _ more _ than repairing frozen lines and the occasional victim of a cave-in?”

He poured in more for his empty cube, before pushing it back to him. “I suppose you  _ could _ be one of the more fervent supporters of the Autobot ideal, but you haven’t had a screaming fit and tried to shoot me, so I assume you’re a little more reasonable than that. I’ve also been watching you –  you have none of their characteristics. Why tie yourself down?”

 

“I don’t know if I can trust your word, after seeing your work,” Pharma gestured to his window. The remains hanging there were hardly a flattering job proposal, no matter in what twisted state of mind Tarn had been when he decided that it was an appropriate medium for his message.

Pharma took the cube again, sipping more of the delicious high-grade. It took him right back to the Golden Age, when life had been good for him and his.

“Characteristics...Autobots have those? I don’t know what company you keep, but I have not seen any defining traits.” That he supposedly did not have.

 

“You’re hardly the first I’ve done the same to. The trend seems to be shock, then weeping. Afterwards, they ask why we could be so cruel. Or try to attack us for vengeance.” Tarn shrugged. “I’ve never said those traits were particularly  _ smart _ ones.”

“This isn’t just a recruitment effort, doctor. It’s a threat as well. You think I believe you’d accept without a little urging?  _ Hardly _ .”

Two hours shrunk down to an hour and something minutes. Pharma still had yet to ask him to be allowed to treat his people. Did he not care? Did he think there was no use? Interesting, nonetheless.

“You could accept, walk away with me, and leave Delphi behind. You could refuse, and I can walk away with a different offer –  one you  _ can’t _ refuse. This? This is merely a statement, as is the miner outside. You can’t stop me. You can’t stop me from killing all of you, nor can you stop me from entering as I please. I could massacre all of you at once, or pick you off one by one, until paranoia and lack of resources does you in. I want you to understand your exact position, doctor, before we enter negotiations.”

He refilled his cube and lifted his mask just enough to take a sip. Once his mask was in place and his cube down, Tarn sighed. “What is holding you back, precisely? Loyalty to your faction? Admirable, but not exactly practical.”

 

Ah, so there was the truth of the matter. He really didn’t have much choice. Tarn made that painfully obvious. He wouldn’t be leaving here with anyone unharmed. Would he really let the rest of Delphi’s staff survive, when he could so easily wipe them out that they were hardly worth the effort?

“It’s not the kind of loyalty you may expect.” Certainly nothing comparable to Decepticon loyalty. Pharma wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t used to this kind of threat. His profession and function dictated he serve wherever he saw the greater use in his skillset. And, not to be forgotten, where he would be most appreciated. Decepticons didn’t have a reputation for treating anyone or anything well.

“I am a forged medic. As I understand it, my very existence is counterintuitive to the Decepticon cause. It would see me reduced to being equal when I am clearly not.” Careful. It would serve his best interests not to seem entirely dismissive of the Cause the intimidating tankformer followed. But wasn’t this an entirely rational argument? That he would remain with the side that didn’t despise his nature?

 

“Equality isn’t something that can be quantified on a singular scale.” Pharma’s ignorance made him sigh again, a touch more disappointed this time. “Would you argue that you and I should be equals –  or that your position is better than mine? Because even so –   _ your _ faction hardly believes that anymore. Functionism is out of fashion, doctor. Besides –  what use is your vaunted status if even your own faction seems to not care?”

 

“At least it would not execute me for my beliefs.” Pharma didn’t like where this conversation was going. He felt entrapment, closing in on every word. Careful. Delicate. He had to leash his poison glossa. It had ruined friendships, opportunities and nearly every social contact he’d ever made. There was good reason for Delphi and Pharma to be perfectly matched in isolation and temperature.

“I’d rather be shunned than killed.”

Or made to believe he was worth no more than a common soldier or miner.  The question of whether or not working for Tarn changed that potential outcome remained to be answered.

 

Tarn chuckled lowly, amused by Pharma’s overstated caution. “Do you think I would go to all this effort to speak with you, only to kill you afterwards? Sounds a little… overdone, don’t you think? I can understand how listening to propaganda can alter your opinions, but I was hoping you’d be more worldly than that.”

Killing Pharma wasn’t going to be  _ completely _ off the table, but who really was perfectly immune, after all? He was as close to it as he could be –  it would be enough. 

 

“I wasn’t referring specifically to you, but to your faction overall,” Pharma corrected, tapping his slim blue fingers on the cube in hand. Would he really consider this, if Tarn wasn’t threatening to kill everyone he was working with? What did they matter? They didn’t even like Pharma.

...but did that mean he could condemn them to death so easily?

“Why me? Because you don’t want my skill to go to waste? That seems a little...frail for reasoning. Who says that if I betray the Autobots, you will trust me not to do the same to the Decepticons? I hear traitors do not last long, particularly in your reach.”

 

Tarn considered this question with far more weight than it likely deserved. The urge to come clean with his intentions warred with his common sense -- could he really trust Pharma with that kind of information? If the medic refused, then Tarn really had no other option but to kill him -- leaving a backdoor like that would guarantee his own attraction be used against him, somehow. Pharma would be stupid not to.

But... would telling him do any favors for his offer? The matter stemmed from two sources -- his practical need for a medic on his team and his personal... interest, Admittedly, the latter dwarfed the the first (perhaps, even, the latter was why the first became a reason -- not even Tarn wanted his personal interests became a factor in his decision-making).

"A Decepticon traitor is not the same as an Autobot traitor," he said instead, “Do you think I am here to tempt you, and then to kill you if you are tempted? That would be a waste of time on my end.”

He reached over to take Pharma’s servo, plucking the cube away from him, and beheld it. It was much smaller than his own, thinner everywhere, and almost delicate to the touch. “The time invested was a personal one, in the end. I wanted to see what your character was. So far, I am satisfied. A threat is not always just that, not for a Decepticon. I would like to have you -- in my division, and elsewhere besides.”

 

In his division? Pharma didn’t even register the rest of Tarn’s words for now, focusing only on that. So this was recruitment, without a choice. He felt both backed into a corner and utterly flattered. Tarn would go to such lengths to assess him, personally. That meant his reputation preceded him, at least enough for even Decepticons to take note of him. His ego blossomed wide, eager to be fed further. As for his moral dilemma of betraying his faction? Easily done away with a noble explanation; he was saving his entire staff from death if he agreed.

“I don't see how I can refuse your offer.”

His spark pulsed madly. Was he really doing this? Defecting so casually over a drink in his office with a murderer?

Yes. Yes he was. Briefly, he wondered what else Tarn meant. His servo remained still to the touch, finding it too rude a gesture to pull away from the contact.

“Do you intend for me to leave...right now? What will happen to Delphi? The staff?”

 

“They will live. They will move on. What else did you think would happen for such an inconsequential clinic in the middle of nowhere?”

They  _ could _ kill everyone, but that might put a slight crimp on Tarn’s chances. So… not yet, anyway. Maybe if Tesarus and the rest got too flighty when they touched down in Messatine again.

Anyway, that all hardly mattered right now. Tarn purred, pleased with Pharma’s capitulation, and rose from his seat. Tarn pulled him up by the servo, moving to Pharma’s side of the desk with a few, quick steps.

“I am rather of the opinion that  _ you _ are the only thing of any importance in Delphi. Do you agree?” 

 

Pharma was quick on his pedes, not daring to pull his servo away from Tarn’s grip. He was embarking into the unknown, not by choice and the gravity of it all had yet to sink in. 

“Of course I do. I am what makes this place run.”

How they would manage without him remained to be seen, but Pharma had a feeling he wouldn’t have the free time to contemplate that future. Delphi was out of his hands. Would they even know what happened to him? Or would they wake up to find him gone and never question it?

His other hand went to his chest. The badge had been there since the state of war had been declared in Iacon. With some effort, he peeled it off. The marks it left would be buffed out, if he would be allowed to have access to regular medical equipment. With a soft tink, he laid it down on his desk. 

 

Tarn hummed in approval at the sight of the abandoned badge. He touched where it had been taken off, tracing the little edges of where he could see the old badge had once lay, and decided that, personal or not,  _ this _ decision had been a very fine one.

His servo slid up, to tilt Pharma’s chin up so he could look him in the optic. “There is still an hour left,” Tarn said softly, “But I think you’re ready now, aren’t you?”

Tarn chuckled and this time, his humor came from somewhere deep in his chest, dark and all-too-pleased with himself. His gentle touch on Pharma’s chin went to the back of his neck and his servo to his hip. “ _ I don’t think you fully understood what you agreed to, doctor _ .”


	4. Chapter 4

Perhaps he didn’t. Pharma also didn’t know how tactile Tarn truly was, because he couldn’t seem to stop touching him at all. The grip had gone from curious to...something else. Pharma felt his spark stutter, caution of a different manner washing through him. Too late. It was too late to back out of it. He’d agreed, and that made Tarn...what exactly? His commander? His captor? Pharma cleared his vocalizer.

“Becoming your medic?” he whispered, hoped. Please, let it be nothing more sinister than that. Were there any Decepticon stereotypes that weren’t true?

The stutter of his spark didn’t stop, instead spooling uncomfortable heat into Pharma’s frame. His vents flared, confused protocols activating fans that had no business turning on. It was...involuntary. Definitely. Terror was far more appropriate than this weird flutter of heat.

 

“Yes. My  _ medic _ .” Tarn spun them around so that Pharma was facing the desk. He kept his servos where they were, still too close. “Do you remember what I said, exactly? I would like to have you in my division…  _ and elsewhere besides _ .”

The laughter that followed it was sharp –  not mocking, but  _ smug _ . “But you were right after all. It  _ is _ an offer you can’t refuse.” A servo went to his vents, touching the flared slats and the air that blew out. “Though I suppose you’re not refusing it anyway, judging by your reaction.”

 

Pharma didn’t know if he preferred death to this, but it was definitely a close contest. Unwanted touches were only the prelude to something worse, and this something worse was entirely out of his hands. With willpower he didn’t know he possessed, he tried to shut his vents, get Tarn’s claws out of his frame.

“I’m not...I’m not shareware and I will not be treated as such.” he hissed, his ego, previously so inflated, collapsed in on itself, replaced by defensive fear.

 

“ _ Oh, not  _ **_shareware._ ** _ But my medic.”  _ He leaned down to press their frames close. Pharma fit against him easily, since his slim frame was so easily dwarfed by Tarn’s, and the servo around his neck ventured lower. He ran his claws over the layers of his chest armor, then down the sides where protoform peeked out tantalizingly.

He could sense Pharma’s spark begin to spin with tight fear. His surge of confidence had abandoned him, leaving the stark reminder of where their relative powers at actually  _ stood _ at. Tarn didn’t wait to spare his terror and rushed onwards, greedily touching what he could only watch before.

“ _ After all, isn’t it only natural to covet beauty?”  _ He left thin scratches over his cockpit. Little flakes of powder from the glass gathered around the tips of his claws, but Tarn was already moving on. With his grip still on Pharma’s vent, Tarn had to reach down to reach his thighs, and forced the medic under him to bend further.

 

There was nothing civil about this anymore. Pharma couldn’t move, he knew their relative physical strength. Not to mention that tone of voice that had him want nothing more than to obey Tarn and bend his frame, despite the sharp little alarms about proximity and contact, even damage. It may only be cosmetic, but Tarn’s implication and expectation, pressing down on Pharma in an entirely uncomfortably manner, had the scratches go spark-deep. Tarn had lied to him, deceived him. Treated with respect? Treated like he ought to be? This was a pitiful, far cry from that.

“Please, stop touching me.”

Coveting beauty and treating it like a toy that belonged to him were two different worlds.

 

“I saw you for the first time in a photo,” Tarn purred into his audial. He hooked his claws deeper into his vents, leaving no option for them to close. “It was just you, on the roof of your clinic. I knew then, that there were really only two options for me.”

He grabbed the underside of Pharma’s thigh and boosted his leg up to the desk. Pinning it there with his knee, his servo once more ventured up. He traced Pharma’s jaw first, ghosting over the proud jut of his chin, the long cheeks, before finally resting on the cupid’s bow of his top lip.

“I could kill you, for being a distraction to me. I could raze your clinic to the nothingness it once was, then rip apart your frame, so I cannot look upon it. Or, I could have you, permanently. So that I can covet you without compromising my Cause, so that you can never stray. Everything prior to that was a threat –  you weren’t wrong there. But it was also a declaration of  _ intent _ .”

He insinuated his digit between Pharma’s lips, past his tightly clamped dentae. Tarn jerked him closer, so that he was forced look at him from the corner of his optic. “I took the trinity from all the bodies,” Tarn said, soft, “because I will do the same to you.”

 

Pharma had never before felt kinship with a fish on a hook before. This particular hook was especially cruel and came without bait. Indignant, humiliated and fearful, he stared at Tarn. What fragile hope for an improvement in his life shattered. Not even the most expensive high grade in the entire universe would make up for this. 

And yet, even like this, pressed into position for Tarn to stare at and touch as he pleased, Pharma would not prefer death. He’d rather endure whatever the decepticon had on his vile mind.

Around Tarn’s claw, it was difficult to speak. Pharma kept, or tried to, at least, the horror from his expression.

“I thought you said you  _ wouldn’t  _ kill me.” he whimpered.

 

“I won’t. Not now. Not after. There is more than one way to take what you want.” A servo went to Pharma’s panel. Tarn cupped it as his engine revved, hungry for more. “Open,” he demanded.

Pharma’s fear was as intoxicating as he’d expected it to be. The slightest tremble of his mouth, the way he held so still under him… it was all Tarn had hoped for, and better for how  _ real _ it was. Reality was always better than fantasy. Even the slightest trickle of unwilling heat from Pharma’s heat was enough to set Tarn’s sensors on fire, raring for all that he could take.

 

He refused. Pharma knew it wasn’t smart, and that he should give in so it wouldn’t hurt so much, but he couldn’t bring himself to force his panel open. It had never been more tightly shut. Tarn’s invasive touch sent electric charges through him that were anything but pleasant. The unwanted heat from his spark bled slow and heavy into his systems, fans whining and turbine stuttering into life. Not this. Please not this.

“Please, anything else.”

He didn’t know what he was pleading for. Tarn would surely be deaf to it. Pharma held onto the table, tried to inch himself away, angling his aft maybe out of Tarn’s sight. No dice. It remained so firmly grasped at it was almost ridiculous, except that Pharma didn’t feel like laughing.

 

Tarn ignored it. His patience sputtered, this close to his goal, and he didn’t waste anymore time on Pharma’s weak pleas. His grip went from caressing to tearing in a second. He dug his claws into the seams first, taking a firm grip of the panel from both sides, before tearing it away with a shriek of protesting metal. The crumpled panel, ruined and torn up, fell to the floor with a clatter. Droplets of energon followed after it. Tarn gathered up a smear of the fuel and brought his claw to his mask’s slit, tasting it. It was unfortunate taking his mask off wasn’t yet an option.

His servo soon went back down, this time for his exposed valve. Tarn rumbled, displeased, when he realized it still too dry for anything. He forced Pharma lower yet, until his cheek was mashed to the desk’s surface, and growled into his audial again.

“ **_Begging won’t help you. But if you must… do it louder._ ** ” A digit slipped into his valve, probing… and stopped when Tarn met resistance. He reared back slightly, suspicious, before his digit returned and touched the same spot. This wasn’t a honeypot trap, as he’d first suspected, but instead…

“ **_You’re still sealed_ ** ?” No way. How could someone like  _ Pharma _ still keep the old factory seals? It could be that he was rebuilt, but he was much, much too proud for this frame to be a fresh one… so that only left one other alternative. “ **_Ah… well. First times should be special, shouldn’t they? Aren’t I the lucky one_ ** ?”

 

This was rapidly becoming the worst day of his life. Worse still than when his best friend ditched him without a care, worse than his arrival on Delphi and realising it was a frozen exile of sorts. This was absolutely, hands down, the worst.

Despair clawed at his throat, and he couldn’t move or fly or run. Tarn just tore at his plating, at his panel, like it was paper to him. Pharma cried out when it was ripped off carelessly, frame shuddering. That shudder settled into a tremble, only interrupted by the twitch and jerk as Tarn prodded at his valve. Pharma dimmed his optics. He didn’t want to see himself like this.

The questions burned in his spark, they were cruel mockeries and Pharma at this moment, knew exactly how hatred grew. He hated Tarn. Right down into his core, he hated Tarn for doing this to him. For giving him hope, and letting it tumble into the worst pit of despair the medic had ever experienced.

“Not like this,” he whispered to his desk, “Please don’t take this from me.”

What was the use? He was pleading with a monster. Tarn didn’t care that some part of Pharma had believed in true love. Tarn didn’t care that Pharma had saved himself until he would meet someone he actually trusted. Tarn didn’t care that Pharma could feel warm liquid pouring over his face, escaping his optics in a desperate plea to ease the pressure on his plating.

 

“ **_This is only the beginning of what I will take_ ** ,” Tarn only promised, before he turned the medic so that he faced him. The tears he didn’t bother, leaving them as is. With a heave, he swept everything on the desk off and sent them crashing the ground. 

Shattered pieces of datapads crunched underfoot as Tarn shoved Pharma back and up against the desk. Everything about him spoke of fear, terror -- and Tarn relished it. If Pharma was beautiful normally, then the tears that glittered down his cheeks made him exquisite. When Tarn moved forward, he stepped on Pharma's discarded panel, and it flattened under his weight.

"You're afraid," he murmured, smoothing his servos down Pharma's chest while he pushed him down to lay across the desk horizontally. He spread his thighs so his valve could be better seen. " **_You said you think you were better than anyone else -- and look at you now. If you were better, would the Autobots have sent you here? They must've known I have a base here. They would've known I would have run into you, sooner or later. Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe you were supposed to be given up to me, the sacrificial lamb, and never mind the consequences_ ** ."

Tarn pushed his digit inside Pharma again, pushing past the dryness that still held him back, and leaned in over the medic. Resting his weight on his elbows, Tarn nuzzled his neck. His talent reached into Pharma, deeper than anything he could ever reach, and pulled at his spark like the strings of a puppet. " **_I do love my beautiful things. You belonged to me that minute you stepped onto this planet, Pharma. You just didn't know it yet_ ** ."

 

At least Tarn hadn’t thrown him across the room. The minor damage to his frame was, however, no consolation for what was about to happen to him. Pharma could only feel cold dread, until Tarn’s blasted voice reached inside of him, tore from him what he would never surrender willingly. His spark spun mad, alien heat into him, activating protocols without his consent. He never felt so helpless before in his entire life. All of his struggles weren’t being executed, his frame as much a traitor as his spark. Only his mind seemed free of Tarn’s control, and it watched in horror as the tankformer touched him as he pleased. Filthy, despicable, Decepticon. Pharma should have known better. He should. He saw the damage done to the guards, the miners, the horrible gifts Tarn had left, for him. He should have known better. The spiral didn’t stop, nor did the tears.

Did he belong to Tarn? Had he been given as a sacrifice? Had Prowl known the DJD were here?  _ Helpless _ . He was so helpless and weak. Nothing he knew could help him here. All his prowess and pride were nothing here, because Tarn could force himself on him and nothing, no one would stop him him.

Mutely, and with great effort, he shook his helm, only possible because it was no longer crushed against the desk.

“I’m. Not. Yours.”

At least his vocalizer could resist Tarn, even if his frame and spark could not. Pharma bit his lip hard when his fans surged and his valve accepted the intruder with lubrication protocols.

 

Tarn took Pharma's servo and put it on his valve so he could feel the lubricant there. It drooled out, responding to the immutable power of his voice, thick and sticky and full of betrayal. "I think your body would disagree."

Emboldened by the success, his digit pushed in deeper, feeling Pharma stretch around him. Despite what Pharma’s said, it was welcoming and opened up around him, accepting whatever he put in. A claw circled over his anterior node, flicking at it. "Look at our  _ brave _ little medic," he cooed, "So terribly  _ good _ . So terribly  _ skilled _ . He's saving his whole staff. He held off the DJD and suffered for it. That's what they will say, when they find this. Or will they  _ pity _ you? Will that be your legacy? Pharma, snatched up against his will. Poor,  _ poor  _ Pharma."

He continued to manipulate Pharma's digits alongside his own. The little valve was already growing tight even with only one of his digits and one of Pharma's inside. When he pushed deeper and met the seal again, he pushed Pharma's digit against it too.

"You were so proud about being a forged medic... were you saving this, perhaps? Did you imagine you might lose it this way?"

He pushed harder and felt the seal give way, just a fraction. "I could take you any way I want. I could make you bleed or wreck your pretty little valve so thoroughly you won't even recognize it. And yet... I hold back. Have you wondered  _ why _ ?"

Tarn drew the digit back, and instead pressed Pharma's servo against his anterior node. Pressing his palm down on it, he ground on the flashing node with a squelch of lubricant slicking up both their servos. The scent of lubricant hung heavy in the air, as did the sound of both their fans cycling air. The noise was only broken by Pharma's intermittent, horrified sobs. He tried to mute himself, but his trembling gave him away as thoroughly as his tears did. "Because you will  _ hate _ yourself, Pharma. You will hate yourself for letting this happen and for letting yourself like it. Your body betrays you already -- how soon until your mind  _ follows _ ?"

Kneeling down, Tarn bent his helm close to his valve. With one servo, he deftly flicked his mask higher up on his face and pressed close as he could. His glossa licked a broad stripe up the slit of his valve first, tasting the lubricant there. Then he pushed his glossa in, until he could the seal at the very tip. His engine's roar grew louder and Tarn bent to his task with renewed fervor. Pharma was  _ his _ quarry. He’d marked him, the day he saw him, and known that one way or another this would end in Pharma’s destruction. 

 

If Pharma could move, twist or even see Tarn in his current position, he would certainly spit at him. He would never do this willingly, and if it wasn't for Tarn's horrendous talent, he certainly wouldn't be getting wet for him now. Unfortunately, the fire of his outrage had absolutely no vessel to act through, because his controlled frame pulsed absolute pleasure up through his node. Tarn knew how to treat a valve, and Pharma cursed him sevenfold for it.  

Silence had dictated his vocalizer apart from a few choked sobs, but now he could only keep himself from voicing any pleasure. It wasn't real. He kept telling himself that about the pulses coming from his spark and frame. This was all superficial, fabricated by that dreadful Decepticon. Pharma would never lubricate for a damn monster and rapist. That was beneath him. If he didn't give Tarn the satisfaction of a reaction, perhaps the tank former would change his mind about what he was doing. His claw, his glossa, it was disgusting, but it didn't hurt. Other parts might.

 


	5. Chapter 5

If Pharma thought he could escape Tarn’s attention by being limp and quiet, then he was sorely mistaken. Tarn lapped a little more at his valve before pulling away, moving up Pharma’s frame, stopping only to kiss and nibble at whatever piece of plating caught his optic. The medic was doing his best to stare up at the ceiling blankly, unseeing, but Tarn pulled him out of that with a sharp nip to his neck cables.

“You should see yourself,” Tarn purred, voice laced with heady satisfaction, “Such a beautiful thing you are… and so _ proud _ , too. You were wrong when you said I would hate you… no. No, I don’t hate you at all. I just want to have you…”

Between them, Tarn continued to push Pharma’s digits on his anterior node, feeling the minute twitches of his frame each time Tarn managed to touch just  _ right _ .

“… and to break you.”

Tarn’s servo came to snake around Pharma’s thin neck once again. All of these cables… some of them carried fuel around his frame. Some, coolant. Other connected important circuit boards throughout his frame. With a sharp smile, Tarn hooked a claw around a coolant line and severed it. The blue fluid splashed across Pharma’s neck and his fist, as bright and pretty as Pharma’s teary optics. When he squeezed, the coolant smeared across his other cables.

He bit his lip when he severed another line – this time a minor energon tube. The scent of fuel mixing with the spilled coolant sent his temperature inching up. The ends of each tube lay limp, still oozing, and gloriously beautiful amid the mess of Pharma’s neck. When he squeezed, more fuel spurted out, and Tarn licked up the mess with a groan, treating it like a delicious treat.

 

Pharma did his best, he really did, but he didn’t know a mech alive who could stay dignified and still and silent when someone snapped your neckcables one by one. He jerked with each one, his efforts to distance himself turning into desperate clutching at Tarn’s plating to keep him at bay. The energon spraying his chest was warm and smelled so horribly familiar. His sensors were mad with alerts, warnings, limbs pulling inward to try and transform, his only mechanism of escape. It was impossible, of course, with Tarn upon him like a beast.

Pharma couldn’t scream. Only a wet gurgle and a putrid mix of coolant and energon came from his lips, vocalizer struck silent with shock and pain.

This was how he would die. This was what Tarn wanted all along. To kill him slowly, and desecrate every part of him as he went.

“Why?”

He didn’t expect an answer as he stared down at what he could see of Tarn.

 

The answer came to him with laughable ease. “Because I can,” Tarn murmured, pinning down Pharma with his weight. There was little the medic could do, not when Tarn outweighed him in both modes and needed only an arm to keep him effectively trapped.

Still…

He smoothed a servo down the flapping wings, smearing energon across it. Pharma was trying to  _ run _ and wasn’t that just adorable?

“Does the pretty little jet want to fly away?” he asked, mocking. His thumb dug into the transformation seam of a wing, lifting the plating up slightly. “Transform and fly up, up and  _ away _ –  but you’ll need  _ wings _ for that, won’t you?”

Using only his digits, Tarn began to peel the plating back. It tore away with a crackle of circuits separating, exposing the grey underside. There was also rows of blue lights, winking up at him, and Tarn’s attention was briefly diverted from Pharma so he could investigate them.

With a prospective expression, he stabbed his claws through one such row, shattering all the lights there.

 

The jet in his grasp spasmed violently at that, trying anything and everything to get the Decepticon off of him. To no avail. Pharma didn’t just cry coolant now, but his shrieks and curses would be heard by no one. His staff were lucky to meet death slow and sleeping, because this was...the worst mistake of Pharma’s life.

“You pitspawned monster!” he hissed, afraid for his life, his wings, his every frame part which Tarn seemed intent on cutting, ripping or demolishing in one way or another. How could it possibly get worse? 

That seed of hatred? It was growing rapidly, blooming, blossoming and consuming what parts of Pharma could still think coherently and weren’t aflame with agony. All the while his hands were trapped, one pressed against Tarn’s chestplate, thick and unbearably warm, the other palm pressed tight to his node, squelching with lubricant and energon and despair.

 

And  _ there _ was his reaction. Tarn raked his claws through the mess then withdrew to peel back another plate. What use were wings that couldn’t function? There was nowhere for Pharma to go, not once he was in Tarn’s grasp.

When Pharma tried to scream more insults, Tarn covered his mouth with his own, swallowing up his building shrieks. It was a harsh kiss, full of force and dentae that ripped through all of Pharma’s attempts to fight back this invasion. Satisfaction at finally punching through Pharma’s facade of calm dripped more heat through Tarn, and he pulled back from the ravaged wing long enough to spread Pharma’s legs for himself once more.

His panel retracted, allowing for his spike to pressurize. Tarn pressed close against Pharma’s valve and the warm heat of him tempted him. Yet, he couldn’t resist one last taunt.

“I’ll not only be your first,” he said, whispering it, “but also your last.” It would be him. Always, him. He would kill Pharma before that fact changed. His engine roared in triumph when Tarn pushed in, in a valve that still hadn’t been prepared enough, and tore through the seal with brutal efficiency.

 

It was as pleasant as receiving a sledgehammer to a cluster of sensors. Pharma didn’t pretend anymore, he screamed. It was painful and it was humiliating and it felt like he couldn’t possibly have gotten a worse draw in the lottery of who would kill him. This sadistic slagheap had somehow singled him out and now, he was showing his true colours. Hatred seeped into every crack that Tarn tore open, literally, physically. His valve was exploding with overstimulation, a lack of lubrication and calipers that tried to stem the invasion being crushed aside. The seal did nothing to prevent Tarn from stealing what Pharma had saved. The first spike he’d ever taste, and it was disgusting.

But Tarn was wrong. Pharma’s hatred never turned towards himself. It was focused, like a laser scalpel, on Tarn and him alone. He’d pay for this. Pharma didn’t know how or when, but he would. Sobs mingled into his cries of pain and weak protests that called for Tarn to stop. Begging wouldn’t do a damn thing, because this mech was cruel and sparkless to the core.

 

Begging actually  _ did _ something alright –  just not what Pharma wanted. Each weak cry Tarn heard was encouragement to continue. Hearing Pharma hiccup when Tarn thrust in too hard was a prize all on its own and drawing a scream out until his vocalizer threatened to short was as fine as any opera piece. Tarn purred his engine as he ravaged the medic’s frame beyond salvation. Soon, fuel mixed with the lubricant. He’d still been too rough, and Pharma’s array suffered for it.

The ridges decorating his spike  tore through the lips of his valve, leaving them rubbed raw, and when Tarn was fully buried in Pharma, stretching him beyond his limits, he saw how Pharma’s abdomen warped to let him in. The servo that’d been pressed to his anterior node moved up to press to the distinctive bulge so he could feel it.

Trapping Pharma’s servo there, Tarn moved again. Even if he could ignore the sensation of his valve being ruined amid the pain, there was nothing to hide the fact that he could simply touch where Tarn was. It was real, terribly, wonderfully real, and Tarn’s smiled broadened as he tasted the despair rolling off of Pharma. 

“Look at me,” he ordered, tone guttural with thick arousal.

 

Pharma obeyed, and his optics were no longer bright with distress, but flickering with the complete overload of painful sensation. It would white out any misplaced charge, especially now that Tarn had ceased to use his voice to force Pharma into arousal. Now he was just in miserable pain and agonizing fury.

“I hate you,” he whispered as he stared, forced to touch where Tarn desecrated his very frame, warped his plating and broke what delicate internals lay beneath. There was nothing Pharma had ever felt this strongly about, nothing that could compare to the mind numbing hatred consuming him.

The rest of him ached as his mind and optics burned. There was no pleasure derived from the horrible intrusion on his body.

 

Tarn laughed at that. It pleased him, absurdly, to see the pent-up emotions Pharma couldn’t even say. When he bent down to kiss him again, Tarn bit him for his offense. Pleasing or not, it could hardly go unpunished.

He overloaded a little while later, to the sound of Pharma’s continued pain. His grip turned crushing, crumpling the indents of his digits into Pharma’s plating, and Tarn stilled briefly, venting hard. Even so, even as transfluid leaked out around his spike, he wasn’t done. He bit Pharma’s lip hard enough to split the derma, and lapped the energon that welled up.

“Your staff will be waking up now,” Tarn murmured to him, “Do you think they might’ve heard you by now? That they’ll try to check on you? Do you  _ want _ them to?”

 

“What? No!” Pharma jerked his face away from the horrible mask as best he could, though distance really wasn’t in this position for him. The thought of his staff, seeing him like this? He’d rather be dead. It was one thing that Tarn had broken every bit of Pharma he touched. It was another to let people who respected him also witness his humiliation.

“Haven’t you hurt me enough?” 

A stupid question. Pharma had read enough psychological evaluations to know Tarn was a particular brand of sociopath and that any denial would be taken as encouragement. He had a better chance at convincing Megatron himself to surrender in the war than getting Tarn to stop.

  
  


“We both know the answer to that.”

Tarn nuzzled the side of Pharma’s helm in mocking affection, holding him tightly so he couldn’t move away, and scraped a claw down his chassis. 

“I’ve kept my promise,” he said. The timer had stopped long ago –  Tarn wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to get up by now. “They live. They remember. And,” he glanced at the camera in Pharma’s office, tucked into the upper right corner, “they  _ know _ .”

He grabbed Pharma bodily, and twisted around both of them. Pharma was roughly sprawled across his lap, facing the camera that stared down at the two of them, and sank down on Tarn once more. He propped him up against his chest, drawing nonsensical patterns across the conspicuous space where his badge was gone.

“ _ Now… let’s think _ .” Switching to his talent was simple enough. Pharma’s spark was running fast, like a rabbit in a trap. “ _ I wonder what they would believe if they saw you enjoying yourself. Especially after you gave up to me so easily –  it’s easier to believe in the  _ **_yes_ ** _ than the  _ **_no_ ** , _ wouldn’t you agree _ ?”

Tarn planted his servos around his hips, only to hold him upright.  _ “Go on, Pharma. Give them a show to remember. _ ”

 

Pharma’s moan was half a wail, but he couldn’t deny or unhear what the voice commanded of him. His spark hurt, it spun so fast, in the thrall of Tarn’s talent, pumping out devilish heat that Pharma could only helplessly watch infect all of his system. His valve, dented, torn, abused, suddenly awash with lubricant, calipers, broken here, flattened there, opening and spiralling on Tarn’s spike, as if this was all his frame ever wanted. Pharma moaned again, this time with regret as pleasure, unwanted, alien and heated, surged through the pained sensors all over his frame.

He was starting to run out of coolant, as it dripped down his face and onto his snapped neck-cables, mingling with what had been spilled and continued to bleed.

The camera...Humiliation burned as strong in him as hatred and Pharma lowered his optics away from it, trying to hunch down on Tarn’s lap as best he could. Not like this. No one should see him like this.

“Monster.” he chanted, quiet, near delirious with pain and fake pleasure.

 

“ _ Move _ ,” Tarn demanded. He held Pharma tighter, watching the camera as much as he did him. The feeling of his valve suddenly loosen around him, calipers accommodating rather than pushing, drew another harsh growl from his engine. Pressing his mouth to the side of Pharma’s helm, he whispered again.

_ “You can’t stop this. You want more. Scream for me, Pharma. _ ”

 

“Frag you!” Pharma hissed, but he couldn’t disobey the order, his hips, aching as they were, attempting to do what he’d been told. Pharma’s hands came down to support his weight as he began to move, thrusting Tarn deeper into himself and lowering his face so the camera wouldn’t have quite such a view of his tears. More of the disgustingly invasive heat. Now he could really feel Tarn, beyond the thick haze of pain, because he was angling his body on top of that thick spike, which filled him out far above his size compatibility.

The rhythm also came disgustingly easy to him. The thick shaft was easily stretching him out completely, brandishing a deep dent into the very edge of his valve and embedding calipers into his abused mesh. And yet, Pharma could feel his spark spin heated desire. It should make him sick. It did, in reality. But Tarn’s voice controlled him and his frame and he could not fight it off. Maybe obedience would get the pain to stop sooner.

 

_ “Good _ ,” Tarn praised, patting him. Pharma was beautiful no matter the situation –  his willingness didn’t factor into the situation. Seeing him cry as Tarn thrust into him was as gorgeous as seeing him frag himself on Tarn’s order was. From behind Pharma, Tarn wiggled his digits in a slow wave.

_ “Look up, doctor _ ,” he said, pushing Pharma’s chest back against his.  _ “Let them see you.” _

His servo went back down to cup the bulge that pushed his plates outward. “ _ In fact… don’t you think now is a good time for a good-bye? Why don’t you go ahead, doctor. Tell them while you can.” _

 

Pharma didn’t want to say a damn word. He didn’t want any of his staff, be it nurses or First Aid or Ambulon or the miner foreman who had been getting so flirty lately, to see him like this. Hurt. Humiliated. Defeated by a filthy Decepticon.

But what choice did he have? He thought he was saving them all. In a way, he still was, even if it cost him his pride, his self-respect and everything about his frame he held sacred. For Delphi, he would suffer, for however long Tarn decided to keep him around.

“Don’t stay,” he choked out as he looked at the camera, pleading with it for help he knew wouldn’t come or matter, “Leave this planet. Take all the miners, the patients, take them and go. Please.”

_ Don’t look for me. Don’t rescue me. It will get you all killed. _

Ratchet always claimed Pharma was unbearably selfish. Would he ever get to see this, if he cared at all? He’d know. Who was the selfish one now, Ratchet? Who would give themselves up so entirely to save another, Ratchet?

Bitter satisfaction did not mix well with the unwanted heat, because Pharma could feel some sort of charge build as he stared into the camera and continued to move up and down on Tarn’s spike. His moans sounded less pained, and more hurried.

“Just leave Messatine. It’s not ahh-  _ worth _ it.”

 

“ _ And now you’ve _ **_definitely_ ** _ secured their stay _ ,” Tarn murmured behind him, “ _ Unless, of course, they are the type to leave you. Who knows, really, with Autobots?” _

As they watched, the camera began to move. It swivelled on its little mount until the lenses were pointed elsewhere. Then, the light blinked off.

“ _ Well, _ ” Tarn said,  _ “Would you look at that. Do you think this is their noble attempt to save you some dignity? Or maybe they don’t believe you. You  _ **_are_ ** _ in the lap of a Decepticon, looking like you’re enjoying it. And you are.” _

Tarn reached around to rub at Pharma’s anterior node. Pharma was wonderfully responsive around him still and each shudder of his valve when he moved pushed a little more charge out along Tarn’s plating. “ _ Now, don’t you think it’s time for an overload?” _

 

It was his frame’s mindless obedience, that was all. Pharma wouldn’t accept anything else as reality when the inevitable overload flamed through him, expanding like an explosion over his sensors. It was just fabricated, even as he moaned and stilled and let the charge wash out the blue from his optics with white. All fake, lies, only the thrall of Tarn’s talent. No part of him had truly enjoyed any of this.

At least his staff were alive, sort of knew what happened, and hopefully packed up this very instant to leave. They couldn’t linger here a moment longer. Not when the DJD was here.

Pharma slumped back against his captor, his tormentor, the new bane of his existence. Had Tarn had enough fun for one day? Did he expect Pharma to functionally transform like this? 

“Let go,” he muttered, shuddering as the thick weight lined up and stuffing his valve became increasingly uncomfortable.

 

For once, Tarn complied with Pharma’s wishes. He let go and leaned back. What would the medic do, after all this?

“You will be coming with me,” he said, tone almost conversational, “Don’t think you’re free to go anytime soon. You belong to me now.”

As if Pharma hadn’t been. But it was good to clarify. “Enjoy your overload?” he asked instead, leering. With a swipe of his servo, his mask was back down and locked into place. 

 

Pharma slid off of Tarn’s lap, collapsing to the floor on his hands and knees, but at least he was free of Tarn’s voice. He gasped and shuddered, trying to help his ailing systems recover. Tarn was sure not to be patient with him, no matter how shocked his frame remained. His spark coiled tight, vulnerable after so much manipulation, trying to shield itself to no avail.

“You made me do that. Frag you and your voice.” Pharma hissed, crawling over to a wall and pressing his back to it as he sat down, inspecting the damage done to his valve. Immediately, his hands folded into tools as he lasered some lacerations and cut out damaged mesh with dry, choked sob. No more crying, he swore to himself. Tarn enjoyed it way too much.

 

Tarn languidly followed after Pharma, watching with vague interest as he immediately got to repairing himself. His digits fluttered over Pharma’s undamaged wing, considering, before it drifted up to his cheek. “You will,” he promised, “And often.”

His soft caress suddenly transformed, and he pinched Pharma’s jaw in his servo, yanking him closer. “You still fight. Not bad –  we’ll see how long that lasts, won’t we?”

He dragged Pharma closer, ignoring the closeness of his scalpels. “Now… I think it’s time we took our leave, don’t you?”

 

The temptation of cutting Tarn’s plating with his scalpels was overwhelming and only slightly dissuaded by the massive size of the tankformer. He could crush Pharma before the medic could ever carve out his spark as he was very, very tempted to try.

“I can’t fly like this. And you ripped off my panel.”

Which meant that if Tarn had a division, they would all see his array. Pharma glared at his captor. He also didn’t want to be paraded past his former staff, bleeding, covered in Tarn’s transfluid.

 

“You’ll manage,” Tarn said briskly. He grabbed Pharma’s elbow and pulled him up. Pharma couldn’t move as fast as he could anyway, and Tarn had no intention of letting him fly anywhere. He was simply slung over Tarn’s shoulder like a sack. Ignoring anything Pharma might say –  or shriek, in his case –  Tarn aimed at the wall where the miner hung.

Plasma sliced through the metal like a knife through butter. In moments, there was a hole large enough for Tarn to leap out of. He patted Pharma one more time.

“Take a good look,” he said, “because this is the last you’ll ever see Delphi.”


End file.
